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Major power line upgrade criticized
By DAVID GRAM The Associated Press Kimberly Hayden, a lawyer
for the Vermont Electric Power Corp., told the Public Service Board on Wednesday
that state law and a 1970s Vermont Supreme Court decision allow the company not
to provide such notification. Board Chairman Michael
Dworkin asked, “Your position is you don’t have to give notice to property
owners abutting the project?” “No, I don’t,” Hayden
answered. The exchange came during a
preliminary board hearing on what was described Wednesday as the largest utility
construction project in VELCO is the company that
handles bulk transmission of power to Central Vermont Public Service Corp.,
Green Mountain Corp., and the state’s other distribution utilities. It formally notified the
board last month of its intent to spend $128 million to build: u A new 345,000-volt power
line parallel to a smaller, existing line, from an existing major transmission
station in u An increase in capacity on
the existing 115,000-volt line between u Installing a larger wire
on an existing line between Barre and Williamstown. u And upgrades at 13
substations around VELCO says the project is
needed to shore up Also Wednesday, Hayden told
the board VELCO is under time pressure if it wants to have Under a recent ruling by the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the project will have to be done and in
service by the end of 2007 if it is to be designated as a “pool transmission
facility.” That designation would allow
sharing the costs of the project with utilities — and their ratepayers —
around The huge impact of a project
which is expected to affect at least 17 towns from James Dumont, lawyer for one
of the groups, contested Hayden’s reading of the law on notifying property
owners near the project. Dworkin asked lawyers to
file written arguments on that question by next Tuesday. They believe the project, or
at least most of it, isn’t needed, and that the power demand growth could be
countered with more aggressive energy conservation efforts. He also said recent studies
by the World Health Organization and the National Institute for Environmental
Health have raised new worries about the health effects on people living and
working near high-voltage power lines. Tom Dunn, project manager
for VELCO, said the company had studied energy conservation as a solution to its
system reliability problems. He said it could work only in conjunction with the
construction of new power plants. Dunn said electro-magnetic
radiation from the power lines would be far below the limits set by the only two
states that have such limits: |